It’s the Budweiser party train! Well, not quite. But, during September and October, Montreal’s métro riders can check out a visual stunt crafted by Budweiser Quebec and BBDO Montreal, featuring a guy rocking out with his guitar.

Using old-fashioned flipbook techniques, 36 images of a dude in progressive stages of a guitar solo were affixed to all nine cars of a métro train on Montreal’s Green Line. So, as the train whizzes into each station, riders waiting on the platform can see the full illusion of the ‘performance.’ The photography was done by Montreal-based Martin Girard.

‘I wanted to do something around music, and create a stunt around back-to-school [time],’ explains Stéphane Boulay, marketing manager for La Brasserie Labatt’s Budweiser Family Brands in Quebec. ‘BBDO came back with the flipbook idea. For me, it was like ‘wow.”

While the stunt obviously reaches all métro riders, the primary target is legal drinking age-24, skewing male. ‘We want to project a youthful image of the brand,’ Boulay explains. ‘It’s important for us to do innovative things.’ They chose the Green Line because it passes several universities and colleges, including McGill and Concordia.

Ron Christie, the Budweiser Family’s internal media planner, oversaw the stunt’s media buy. He worked with Marketel, Labatt’s media buying agency.

Budweiser Quebec is also doing a stunt around university football to leverage its sponsorship of Les Carabins (Université de Montréal), Rouge & Or (Université Laval) and Vert & Or (Université de Sherbrooke). For three days leading into the opening games of each of the teams, Budweiser had three party-animal-type guys standing in front of football-themed Budweiser billboards, shouting and getting passersby riled up about the upcoming football season. Each of the guys wore a football jersey with one letter on it, to ultimately spell out B-U-D.